Why is an IMAP Inbox Only Displaying 10,000 Items When There are Many More Emails on the Server?

Anonymous
2022-05-04T04:23:15+00:00

I have an IMAP email account that is hosted by AOL Mail, which I download into Outlook 365. The AOL Account has emails going as far back as 2015, and until recently all of those emails were visible (and searchable) through Outlook. About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that I could no longer search for emails going back farther than 6 months ago. Those emails are still on the AOL server; I can see them if I use AOL's webmail interface (which is pretty mediocre). But they are no longer downloading into my IMAP inbox. Indeed, at the bottom of the inbox it now says I have 10,000 items. 

                                     [!\[\](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/40c12e9d-b5a2-4a30-8bc4-4503de01cbbc?platform=QnA

That's the maximum. If I delete say 100 emails, another 100 emails will download from the AOL server but the downloading will stop when I hit 10,000. (When new emails download from the account, older emails are deleted so I'm just about always at 10,000 items). The full set of emails remains on the AOL server.
In my IMAP Account Settings for this email account, I have the "Keep Mail offline" setting pushed all the way to the right at "All".
[!\\ I can't find any setting in Outlook that limits the number of emails. Nor does there appear to be any setting in the AOL account that limits 3rd party IMAP mailboxes to only 10,000 items (at least not one that I can find). New emails are downloading and syncing with the AOL server, so my connection settings appear to be correct.
Is there some kind of Registry setting that is limiting the number of items that will load into this email inbox? I used to have access to all of the emails that were on the AOL server. Is there any way to get that back? One last note. I deleted the AOL account from Inbox, rebooted and then reinstalled the AOL account. It still only downloaded 10,000 items in the IMAP inbox. Also I'm using the most recent version of Outlook 365.
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/e4efa42d-54c3-4fa7-b54a-ae7d93efb421?platform=QnA)](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/40c12e9d-b5a2-4a30-8bc4-4503de01cbbc?platform=QnA)

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-10-07T02:23:25+00:00

    All done. 39,064, all there (matches the sum of the read and unread emails on mail.aol.com). Was about to say there was 1 less in outlook and likely something hadn't updated yet, but as I was about to type that, one more came in. A new one. Still no clue why it emptied out and filled up again. Also means that for a while I was missing most of my messages so I couldn't search for them.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-10-06T23:48:32+00:00

    It just happened again. I noticed my Win10 Office 2019 outlook was sticking in send/receive (which is a bug that has happened from time to time over the years); restarted it, then noticed that my main inbox (around 40K) was a few thousand. It's up to 7K and climbing. Let's see how high it goes.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-10-06T22:54:57+00:00

    Click in the box at the top of the range, scroll down (use the scroll bar), shift-click in a box at the bottom. You can move them all.

    If you grabbed more than 1000 it will tell you that it only took the first 1000 messages.

    At some point it looked like I had double messages but it either cleared up eventually, or did when I rebuilt my OST.

    It doesn't seem that it took the first 1000 as I had gaps, but eventually I got the whole range. I created a folder a year at a time, and based on the size, added another year to it, and when done, renamed for the included range.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-10-06T14:38:15+00:00

    Does anyone have suggestions for moving emails on Yahoo to folders more quickly? It is so tedious and time consuming

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-04T23:58:19+00:00

    Just a brief comment for now. The observation that many are on AOL for free is a valid question that leads to the more difficult part of a suit. All of us will have signed an agreement, paid or no, that disclaims warranties, third-party support, etc. All of us, though, rely on AOL to provide services and act in accordance with previous practice and industry standards, so there are arguments to be made on both sides of that question for free and paid. (consideration to bind an agreement doesn't have to be financial, it could include authorization to sell my data). My thought is that even the nuisance value and bad PR of threatened litigation may get C-suite attention and it may be cheaper for them just to solve the problem rather than risk litigation.

    Whether there would be an expert properly positioned to help is a question others likely know better, one of the go to for attorneys is https://www.tasanet.com and I imagine there are many industry sources. That might make the most sense as a first step, as if we were ever to decide to try and engage a class action firm, having an expert already on board would make that much easier. It would be helpful to hear from those of you in the internet/email/software world if retaining such an expert would make sense.

    I'm sure a first Zoom meeting would be a bit of a raucous affair and a bit much to organize, perhaps a doodle poll and a good agenda would make the effort worthwhile.

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